Personal Identity

The following quote reflects a problem more broad reaching than starting an investigation into the truth with a predetermined conclusion. 
 
The fact that politicians and theologians alike were using [science] to shore up their beliefs struck Hoyle as ridiculous. As he wrote in 1956: ...'An argument is judged "right" by these people because they judge it to be based on "right" premises, not because it leads to results that accord with the facts. Indeed, if the facts should disagree with the dogma then so much worse for the facts.' - Simon Singh
 
Singh wrote the above regarding the scientific debates regarding the origins of the universe. For the most part the proponents of the steady state and big bang models within the sciences made no connections between their theories and religion. Various theologians and politicians were guilty of trying to bolster their positions. Incidently, the leadership of the Soviet Union was the political force to which Hoyle was referring. Because of the dogma within the suffocating political environment of the Soviet Union the behavior was much the same as dogmatic behavior within inflexible religious sects. 
 
The problem in the political and religious cases was, of course, starting with the conclusion and selecting evidence based on the predetermined conclusion. The problem seems to be intensified when people base their identity on their belief system whether political or religious. When someone introduces themselves in a manner similar to, "Hi, I am [a member of this belief system]" they are likely to view the world in a very rigid way. They are also likely to feel personally threatened by any information that contradicts their beliefs and thus their identity. 
 
When someone defines themselves by group membership rather than as an individual they often limit themselves to that group's views of the world. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this. However, such an outlook tends to make a person look to others for many of their opinions whether they like to admit that or not. It is less common to find truly thoughtful and self-generated responses and novel, creative ideas from such people. Any group has expectations, norms, and taboos for solid evolutionary reasons. However, what worked well for our more primitive forebears (i.e. following the crowd) is not conducive to finding truth in many cases. 
 
Advances often come from those who tend to be independent thinkers and who are willing to "go against the grain." Following tradition and accepting the way things have always been done, surprise of surprises, results in doing things the way they have always been done. 
 
An additional problem with belief systems is they typically have forbidden areas where questions are not allowed. The way that a person can view these forbidden areas is highly defined and controlled. If all we need to do to find out what a person believes on a certain topic is ask his or her priest, pastor, rabbi, minister, imam, political officer, etc then there is often a loss of freedom of exploration. This is not always the case as someone can evaluate the evidence and arrive at the same conclusion as their group independently. However, when it comes to scientific advances belief systems have generally missed the mark by a wide margin.